Friday, January 25, 2008

Sometimes the time and effort spent delegating a task to one of your library's student workers can take longer and involve more work than just doing the task yourself. Before delegating any task to a student worker, it is often beneficial to ask, "Are you retarded?"

Ugh. I remember having a 15-minute argument with a student worker about going down to pull and photocopy a journal article.He kept insisting he check the catalog to see if we even owned the journal, and wouldn't believe me when I reassured him that the librarian on the other end of the computer would not have been able to ask us to photocopy something if our catalog said we didn't have it.

When I'm not lamenting the fact that they don't bother to even show up half the time, I'm trying not to kill them for yapping constantly about how much homework they have or what their boyfriends did this weekend.

This is why we rarely accept offers from people who want to volunteer in the library (the poor souls just can't understand why we wouldn't want their "help"). The last volunteer we had defaced a collection of children's books that he was supposed to be cleaning.

We take volunteers in my library system. Actually, we wouldn't get everything done without them (cheap county, 3rd richest in the country, always under budget, etc etc). HOWEVER those that are court-ordered or that have to do it for school. Those I can certainly live without.

You're damn lucky to even have student assistants. Our library retardation director decided we couldn't afford them anymore. She won't allow volunteers because they "are such a pain (in the ass)to control". WE have to shelve.

Off topic a little, why are they called "student assistants"? A page is a page is a page.

Our student assistance must be a rare breed, they're actually really good workers, if a bit chatty. But they used to do some of the same jobs that our Staff workers did. Maybe they got better training?

My old library had student workers staff subsidiary reference desks in the evening, and I found out a couple of my students had their boyfriends over and were playing poker in the work area, when they were supposed to be shelving and helping patrons. This was after I told them - only staff allowed in the work area - so yes, "are you retarded" was a question very much on my mind.

OH, My God, I would love to say this to some of my students. I gave up on student volunteers years ago. It's much easier to do it myself than to have to go back and find the books they have shoved behind the others so they won't have to shelve them (!).

A few of our older volunteers are like this - they aren't "retarded" (they're actually quite smart), but at times they do seem to be incapable of learning, particularly when technology is involved. We have people who have been here for years who still can't answer even the most routine computer questions.